“New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk duo” is making its way to the West Coast. Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement make up the funniest mother-folking musical twosome currently rocking, or perhaps gently swaying, their way through the worlds of both music and cable television.
Thanks to their music and hit HBO series Flight of the Conchords (named after their band), McKenzie and Clement have hilariously blurred the line between their real-life identities and their alter egos.
For those who haven’t seen the show, Flight of the Conchords follows Jemaine and Bret (playing humorously fictionalized versions of themselves) in their efforts to make it big as musicians in New York City. Their band, Flight of the Conchords, is comprised of the two men and their acoustic guitars.
Jemaine and Bret are, for lack of a better description, loveable idiots. They’re totally unaware, self-centered, seemingly indifferent to one another and their knowledge of the world appears to be based entirely on ridiculous misperceptions.
In between their antics, which primarily involve sitting around and walking around, Jemaine and Bret burst into song in order to further the plot, as well as conduct witty and humorous commentary.
Each episode features somewhere around three songs, which essentially serve as music videos with Jemaine, Bret and any other characters taking part in the impromptu serenades.
Choice songs include “The Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room),” where Jemaine serenades a pretty girl by explaining that she is easily the most attractive woman in “the whole wide room” and “when [she’s] on the street, depending on the street, [she is] definitely in the top three.”
Then there’s “If You’re Into It,” a song where Bret, confused as to what his new girlfriend Coco likes, offers a variety of activities for the two to engage in “provided that’s the kind of thing that [she thinks she] might be into.”
But it’s not all awkward and humorous romantics; “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros” has Bret and Jemaine donning their hip-hop alter egos in an effort to discourage a couple of street hoods from robbing them. Instead they end up spitting fly lines describing their relatively lame lives. “My rhymes and records they don’t get played, because my records and rhymes they don’t get made, and if you rap like me you don’t get paid, and if you roll like me you don’t get laid,” claims Bret as the Rhymenoceros.
Despite their hilarious musical outbursts, it doesn’t seem to help their career. The band’s manager, Murray Hewitt (played by fellow kiwi comedian Rhys Darby), splits his time between attempts to promote the Conchords (which he does poorly) and his day job as deputy cultural attaché at the New Zealand consulate.
The band meetings often take place in Murray’s office, which is plastered with tourism posters for New Zealand, with exclamations such as “New Zealand: Just like The Lord of the Rings!” Coincidentally, McKenzie had a nonspeaking role in the cinematic trilogy playing an elf that fans affectionately dubbed Figwit.
Between their meetings with Murray and their very occasional gigs, their single obsessive fan, Mel, played by comedian Kristen Schaal, stalks Bret and Jemaine. Mel orchestrates intentional run-ins with the Conchords by hiding out under the stairs outside their apartment and making creepy comments that suggest, among other things, that she watches Bret have sex with a variety of girlfriends and that she herself wishes to arrange a ménage à trois with the two musicians.
Occasional guest star Arj Barker (comedian and subject of the animated internet cartoon Arj and Poopy) shows up playing Dave, a pawn shop employee who lives with his parents but refers to them as his roommates, delusional in the respect that they only believe themselves to be Dave’s parents.
On top of the show, Clement and McKenzie have four records currently available, the first released in 2002 called Folk the World Tour, the second The BBC Radio Series: Flight of the Conchords featuring all six episodes of the duo’s BBC show, the last two have been released by Seattle-based Sub Pop, The Distant Future (EP) and a self-titled full-length release.
Check out the show; maybe download a few of their hilarious songs (available on iTunes and P2P networks Web-wide), and if you like what you hear, maybe grab tickets for Flight of the Conchords, live at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in May (those bad boys are going to sell out faster than George Lucas circa 1999).
Sure, not all their songs are huge hits, but it’s definitely worth hearing Jemaine Clement explain in a live acoustic version of “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros”: “My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment, I made all of the ladies in the first three rows pregnant, yes, sometimes my lyrics are sexist, but you lovely bitches should know I’m trying to correct this.”